Departed
by fluggerbutter
Summary: Their names were JS and JS, and they were best friends, in love in a way no one quite understood. Even when one went on to marry the wicked. Even when one became bitter. Squalor and Snicket through the years, with a mess of a timeline, in no particular order.
1. The Wall

The wall is brick, and very high, but its width has been torn down on either side so that it is only big enough to fit a couple of people.

Two men sit in silence on this wall. Four beautifully polished, black-shoed feet hang about a meter and a half from the ground; above each left shoe is an identical tattoo beneath starch white socks, and higher up, two breast pockets are initialed _JS._

After a while, a voice, soft and lilting, worried. "You know you can't marry her."

Another voice, also quiet, also gentle, but deeper, more serious. "Oh, but I must."

There is a terrible moment of quiet.

Then, shaking,

"Why? Why _must _you?"

A pause. "Leaving her would cause a terrible argument."

"Oh, Jerome."

The response is quiet, pained. "Jacques."

Light eyes meet dark, then.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too."

And pale, clean, piano-playing fingers wrap around ink-stained ones beneath ink-stained sleeves.


	2. The Bullet

You find him in a pool of red, with a hand on his stomach and his eyes just barely open. The window has been knocked out; glass litters the floor and sparkles almost tauntingly in the pouring sunlight. You have seen death and blood before, but this is him, and this is you, and your voice is lost somewhere in your throat and you cannot breathe and you are choking, drowning, dying.

His breath is shallow, hardly there; his eyes are glassing over.

"Stay with me," you say, falling onto your knees, and you're crying. "Stay with me."

"It wasn't her," he murmurs, closing his eyes. "You told me she would but it wasn't her it was just a bullet it was a bullet and it wasn't her..."

"Don't." You take his hand and press his cold palm to your forehead, your voice a whisper, a ghost. "Just shut up, Jerome. Shut up and don't die."

"I'm going to die, Snicket, let's face it; look for me tomorrow and you'll..." He lets out a small laugh, forced and hysterical. "...find me... a grave man."

You let out a sob. "You're... you're not comedic relief in a tragedy, Squalor, don't try to be. Just... shut... up..."

"Shushing never did us any good, did it, Jacques?" His smile is pale to match the sun.

You shake your head and press your hands to his stomach where the blood stains a flower on his light green shirt. Tears are spattered on your lap, in his hair. "_Damn _you, Jerome," you say, foregoing the conventions you were taught. "You're not dying on me. Not now. Not yet."

"Why not? Murdered by a possibly-probably-not-random gunshot in the Dark Avenue penthouse? What a perfectly... fitting... way to go." His breathing is sharp now, coming in gasps. "What... a... death, eh, Snicket...?"

He passes out. You wipe your tears away with a sleeve and force yourself to put more pressure on the wound, using every ounce of energy in you to save your best friend. Harder, harder... but it's not working; he's going to leave you, here, now, and you can't do a thing about i—

Someone is coming up the stairs.

They're going to kill you. You're going to die. Expect the worst, that's what they told you; expect the worst, because it's probably going to happen. They have a gun and they'll shoot you and you'll die. Gone at only twenty-four, lying in a pool of blood with your closest friend and the taunting sunlight.

You hug Jerome tightly. Good-bye, old friend.

* * *

You wake up in your old room at the old school and you remember everything: blood, glass, bullet, tears.

He wakes up and he says, "What happened?"

He is in the bed across from you, where he slept when you were little. He is stitched up and better and fixed, and while there is a throbbing pain in your head, you know it is only from a slight overdose of tranquilizer. He's okay. You're okay.

"You don't remember anything?" you ask.

He shakes his head.

You know who shot that gun. You saw dark hair and ankle boots and a trench coat and pearls — which are currently _in_.

"Possibly-probably-not-random-bullet wound," you say.

"Oh," he says.

"Yes."


	3. The Present

A man of twenty-three exactly sits upon a bench with his thoughts written out on his palms, where only fortune-tellers and the emotionally astute can observe them. One of these few would be able to tell you, had they been examining his ink-stained hands, that he was very worried, and confused, and breathless in the sort of way that lung cancer patients are not, and rather terrified. And then they would be able to discern that he loved someone, very much, and did not know what to do about it.

He thinks he might be in love, but not in the normal fashion.

A part of his brain questions whether there _is _a normal love, and he finds himself running through on his fingers the relationships of the people he knows best.

There is a romance he has watched flourish over years that he thinks might be his standards for an ordinary affair. If love were visible, theirs would span the ocean. But they are both so broken, so burnt. Their lives are full of tears and tangles and complications, rings and codes and boxes with keys within boxes. His love is not like that. It is simple, honest, firm.

A couple he knows have broken the barrier he now faces. But it is not a mutual kind of love. He does not think it fair, that one loves the other so much more. There is a disconnect. Somewhere the attachment fades; somewhere, one is dominant. His love is not like that, either, for their affection is reciprocated in equal doses.

There are others. There is a pair he fears for – half the party he cares for dearly, and he thinks she is making a mistake. But she says she loves him, no matter how… _bad_, and they carry on. Their love is tense, and licked with flames. Two friends he has known since birth are so attached that if one died, the other would too, or barely keep on living. He does not want it to come to that, because he has seen much death, and knows it can arrive at one's doorstep at an instant.

None of these fit the box by which he has been judging himself. He likes his love the way it is. The kind of love where you do not need kisses or pet names or romance at all, even, to assure you it is there. The kind where seeing him, knowing you are friends, best friends, is enough. It is not a normal love, but it is a _good _one.

His hands relax, collapse, his breath returns. He hears footsteps and looks up to see a smile and a box wrapped up in scarlet rice paper.

"Happy birthday, Jacques."

He laughs, softly, out of relief, and gladness, because he realises then that even this is enough. Birthdays on a bench with him is enough. And he reaches up to pull his best friend next to him so that he does not miss the crinkles at the corners of his grey-blue eyes when he laughs.


End file.
